The steel pan was created during the late 1930s in Trinidad and Tobago as a rudimentary percussion instrument capable of producing one or two notes not tuned to any particular pitch, and used mainly for rhythm. Since then it has developed into a family of instruments that can form a steel band, made up of a mix of single and multiple pan members that are tuned to concert pitch and together cover a frequency range of some six (6) chromatic octaves (Pan@Dove of the Desert UMC History of the Steel Pan).
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.org/wik/steelpan), explains that, technically, the steel pan is a pitched percussion instrument, tuned chromatically, made from a drum of the type that stores oil. In fact, “drum” refers to the steel drum container from which the pans are made; the steel drum is correctly called a steel pan or pan, as it falls into the idiophone family of instruments, and is not technically regarded as a drum or membraphone. Steel pans are constructed by pounding the top of the oil drum into a bowl-like shape, known as “sinking” the drum. The drum is tempered over a fire until it is “white hot” and is allowed to cool. Then the notes are laid out, shaped, grooved, and tuned with a variety of hammers and other tools. The note's size corresponds to the pitch; the larger the oval note pad, the lower the tone.
The frequency range of some members of the steel pan family is shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1Frequency Range of Some Members of the Steel Pan FamilyInstrumentNumber of PansFrequency Range 1. High Tenor1D4 to F#6 2. Low Tenor1C4 to E6 3. Double Second2F#3 to D5  4. Double Tenor2 F3 to A5 5. Double Guitar2 C3 to G4 6. Triple Cello3 C3 to B4 7. Four Cello4 B2 to C5 8. Quadraphonic4 B2 to D6 9. Tenor Bass4 F2 to D410. Six Bass6Bb1 to E3  11. Nine Bass9A1 to B3
The steel pan is currently enjoying tremendous popularity and acceptance as a valid art form on every continent and in almost every country, including the United States, United Kingdom, and continental Europe, Africa, Australia, the Caribbean states, China, and Japan. However, the advances in design and popularity have not been accompanied by a matching development in music writing ability. The vast majority of pan players continue to learn by rote, because they have little or no formal training in music. Thus, it takes a long time to master a piece, and the player quite often cannot recall what was learned from long hours of practice because the music has not been documented in a form that can be used as a reference. Further, while music is being generated by pan musicians, they do not yet have a means of writing it down (P. Bishop, Pan in Education, 2004, www.ecaroh.com/pan/steelpaneducation.htm).
A tablature system would permit preservation and critical study. This lack of music notation restricts the opportunities for composers/arrangers to transmit ideas except via face-to-face demonstration or instruction. It also affects their ability to archive their musical ideas as they occur, and retrieve them when necessary. The result is that much of the music is remembered only in part or is lost forever, and a significant amount of time is wasted during practice sessions while composers/arrangers attempt to create music “on the fly.”
At present, some musical scores are available as audio (wave) files and/or digital recordings accompanied by sheet music in standard notation. However, while standard notation tells the trained musician everything there is to know about the music to be played, it provides no visual clues to the untrained pan player about how and where to find the correct note and pitch on the pan.
Steel pan players typically know about sharps, flats, key signatures, time signatures, scales, chords, octaves, and the like, and they know the note names (e.g., C, Eb, G#, B, F#, Bb, etc.), but many have not fully developed the ability to decipher the symbols of standard notation. Consequently, instruction by an arranger, musical director, or section leader is mostly verbal, using note names, and by practical demonstration. These shortcomings notwithstanding, the process has produced magnificent performances of popular and classical music, even though many of the most highly accomplished and internationally renowned exponents of the art form have learned the music by rote.
Some existing systems attempt to add “note names” to sheet music in standard notation. However, even with these aids, untrained musicians still have difficulty determining pitch, and pan players are frequently unable to associate the notes indicated in standard notation with a physical location on the instrument.
Thus, what is missing is the capacity to score music in a form that is understandable to trained and untrained musicians alike, and to provide hard copy for archival purposes. This absence of a common musical language restricts opportunities for fruitful collaboration between pan players, and between pan players and other musicians.
Standard musical notation is geared to the piano. It is written on, below, and above two five-line staffs starting with the lowest notes on the bottom left and continuing upward to represent the notes in the chromatic scales Ao to C7, following the arrangement of notes on the standard piano keyboard. The “grand staff” has the lower notes associated with the bass clef, generally intended to be played with the left hand, and the higher notes associated with the treble clef, generally intended to be played with the right hand.
Various systems of tablature have been developed over the centuries for string or plucked instruments. In the case of the six-string guitar, the system of tablature (TAB) uses a six-line staff to represent the guitar fretboard on which pitch increases as one moves from fret #1 to fret #12. Fret numbers are entered on the staff to tell the guitar player where to stop which strings, in which combinations, and in what sequence, to produce the desired music.
By themselves, and in their present form, none of these systems provides a complete answer for the pan player. It would therefore be desirable to provide a tablature system and method of use for steel pan music.